Sticky Step Ten: Alexandria Falafel & Motel Bar 1233-5 Queen St. West

As Lucas leaves his apartment dressed in a Blue Jays jersey, possibly to take in a baseball game while grabbing a bite at the hot dog cart just outside Rogers Centre, the last of Majestic's scout rats flee en masse, down the street.

Lucas leaving his apartment at 1381 Queen St. West.

Lucas proceeds in the same direction (with his Human-Lizard gear stowed in his knapsack, as always), but whether he's tailing the rats or just heading downtown to catch that ball game is never firmly established because as he approaches the corner, Lucas closes the distance between himself and fresh trouble brewing on Queen St. West.

Lucas walking down Queen St. West, directly in front of Alexandria Falafel and Motel Bar.

As he passes by one particular storefront, a huge crack in the sidewalk appears, throwing Lucas off-balance and heralding the arrival of serious trouble just up ahead. Could this be a job for the city's newest protector?

Lucas loses his footing right in front of Motel Bar at 1235 Queen St. West.

Located at the corner of Gwynne Avenue, Alexandria Falafel at 1233 Queen St. West has been keeping the visitors and residents of Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood fed for years now. Open late, it primarily caters to the after-last call crowd as patrons empty out of the surrounding bars in the area.

Alexandria Falafel at 1233 Queen St. West and the corner of Gwynne Avenue.

One such establishment, Motel Bar, just happens to be right next door to Alexandria Falafel. So titled as a play on the names of other hotel-turned-watering holes in the Parkdale area, like the Drake and the Gladstone Hotel, Motel Bar is slightly different from your typical hole-in-the-wall dive bar.

Motel Bar at 1235 Queen St. West.

In addition to offering up live music for patrons Sunday to Thursday, it also doubles as a vintage record store, as well. The vintage doesn't end with the vinyl, though. Inside, the walls are adorned with old record sleeves, cathode ray tube TV sets and even an original motel sign recovered from Toronto's long-lost strip of cheap, seedy motels along Lakeshore Road.

Motel Bar's namesake, an old rusty sign recovered from Toronto's seedy past.

Next up: The Human-Lizard helps out Mother Wonder (well, sort of) while battling a mutant monster by the Dufferin Street Tunnel and Parkdale Amphitheatre!

-DE

Sticky Step Eight: The Secret Lizard Lair, 1381 Queen St. West.

With nothing happening in the downtown core (and no one to patrol with anyway), the Human-Lizard gives up on the seemingly abandoned Yonge-Dundas Square to head home for the night. However, the next morning he experiences not one, but two rude awakenings as he discovers a swarm of brightly coloured rats all over his apartment! While alarmed at first, Lucas quickly assesses the situation and phones up his buddy, Kenneth Kozlow (a.k.a. Majestic Rat), to tell him to call off his telepathically influenced subjects.

Jerry the lab tech leaving the Secret Lizard Lair.

Then a knock at the door from Jerry, the Walmer + Corp. lab technician, complicates things further as he asks Lucas if he'd recovered from the negative effects of the drug he'd tested earlier in the week, which had landed him in the hospital. Lucas tells Jerry he's fine and quickly dismisses him as Majestic's second wave of rat subjects arrives to call back the first scouting party. As Jerry exits Lucas' building, the address number is seen on the front door, revealing the now not so Secret Lizard Lair to be on the second floor (Apt. #202) of 1381 Queen St. West in Parkdale.

1381 Queen St. West, home of the Human-Lizard.

Depending on your opinion, it's either appropriate or ironic that Toronto's street-level defender of justice just happens to live right above a lawyer's office. Although the ground floor entry of 1381 Queen St. West is depicted as the entrance to the second floor apartments in the The Pitiful Human-Lizard, it's actually the front door to the bustling offices of the Morris Goldstein Law firm on the ground floor.

The offices of Morris Goldstein Law located at 1381 Queen St. West.

Next up: News of the Human-Lizard's heroism spreads to George's Gourmet hot dog cart next to Bobbie Rosenfeld Park at 280 Bremner Blvd!

-DE